walking to walking
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [med school! AU] One girl can't walk due to illness. Another can't due to an accident. Their big brothers go to medical school in Austria to find a way to help their little sisters walk again - and they meet, and so do their little sisters.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Written for the

Random Character Is Your Hero! Redux, random character: Relena Norstein  
Diversity Writing Challenge, j35 – write a fic that explores a death/injury/sickness

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 **walking to walking**  
Chapter 1

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Relena Norstein can walk, sometimes.

Her legs feel like noodles when she tries, and if there's nothing for her to hold on to and cruise like an eight month old child, then she'll fall within a few feet. But she can still walk if she tries.

Saiba Rei could walk, once upon a time, but she can't walk at all anymore. Once upon a time, she could walk like normal, like there was nothing wrong… and there wasn't anything wrong, until one day she froze on the crossing when a car ran a red light and knocked her over.

Really, she's lucky it's only her legs… or rather, her spine. She could have cracked her head open. She could have gotten her ribs splaying her lungs and heart. She's alive. She'll live just fine and she can't walk and that's a relatively small price to pay for being alive.

But sometimes, sometimes, they wish their wheelchairs weren't their prisons as well.

Relena always has someone pushing her wheelchair. Attendants, usually: the silent sort and sometimes she doesn't even know what they look like. It's lonely, having someone at her back who she doesn't know. Sometimes it's Touma, though. She likes when it's Touma because Touma is her big brother and always talks to her. Sometimes it's her father too, but he doesn't talk as much. He gets stuck in his head a lot. He worries. And he's so hard on her big brother as well, because she can't pick up the slack.

She wishes she can help, but she can't. She's only more of a burden because Touma wouldn't be set on curing her if she wasn't sick, and she can't even pretend to be doing fine until she can cross the room and back without needing the wall to hold her up, because who will believe her otherwise?

As for Rei, Rei isn't sick; she's paralysed but it's all the same to her big brother who's obsessed with giving her ability to walk back to her.

So, of course their brothers meet, nose deep in books but sitting close to each other enough times to make eye contact inevitable.

And so, of course, Saiba Rei and Relena Nortsein wind up meeting as well. And it doesn't really matter if it's coincidence, or fate.

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Japan would have throttled them. Touma knows their education system is top notch, but it also doesn't understand haste. Relena doesn't have ten years to wait for him to go through high school in the proper channels, and then undergraduate courses and finally crawl out the other end with a degree that can get him a junior level position. She doesn't have the time to wait for him to claw his way up the ladder until he can do his own research on the things he wants to research while funded by whatever hospital he's working for or whatever institute is investing in his success. But that could take twenty years, or thirty… and the doctors aren't even giving Relena ten. He can't stay here and do that.

Austria has an accelerated programme, if he can keep up with its demanding schedule. And it's not hard to move to Austria. Relena is there, after all. And so is his father.

Well, his father is one of the things that makes it harder, but that's okay. Relena makes it all worthwhile.

So he moves to Austria, settles in while keeping himself as remote from his father as he can manage while being under the same roof. His grandmother's passed some time ago, thankfully, so she can't put a wedge in his plans and his father is too spineless to try. It works to his favour, now. He can move along this path he's set for himself: speed through the rest of his schooling, get into their undergraduate medical programme with stellar marks and an equally stellar interview (because personal stories hit harder than the altruistic but rather empty words they're usually faced with), and by fourteen, he's sitting in a large lecture hall, dwarfed by the benches but finally, finally, feeling like he's going somewhere.

And, to his surprise, there's someone even shorter next to him. Also Japanese, by the looks of him. Also desperate, pressed for time, because he's here and he's got his nose in a book as well and a scowl etched onto his face.

They don't talk. Touma doesn't have time for small talk and he doubts the other boy does either. But he sees him again and again: lectures, the mixer where neither of them socialise but just sit on benches and study, the tutorials were they give quick and curt answers and ask questions that go over their fellow students heads (and apparently age doesn't speak for experience, because the rest of their group is far older, but look far more bewildered as well). Then there's their once a week clinical placements where they've coincidentally wound up at the same hospital on the same day but not in the same bedside tutorial groups (and that's good, because otherwise he'll suspect the administration with tampering with so-called random allocations).

They still don't really talk. But being in so many things together in an already niche course means they'll have to talk, eventually.

And then they do talk, eventually.

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Saiba Neo hasn't come to Austria to make friends. He came to Austria because they're the first country who offered him what he wanted in the time frame he wanted it in. He knows that, logically, there's no rush. Rei's legs aren't going anyway and it's not like it's degenerative or there's anything else that's got the clock ticking, except the usual aging biology. But Rei could walk until not long ago and that makes the difference: that makes all the difference in the world.

Neo can't stand it, so he looks for a way to make it happen as fast as possible, and when modern medicine isn't up to the task, he decides to become a doctor and fix that problem himself. Which means escaping Japan because Japan's got a set timeline and they'll be old and torn apart by the time he reaches the end, so he puts feelers out elsewhere and Austria's the first to get back to him.

And maybe there were better offers following, but he shoots off a reply to Austria and they're moving, just like that. He's speeding through the rest of high school, just like that. And he's starting undergraduate medicine just like that, sitting next to, of all the coincidences, another Japanese kid who doesn't look like he's old enough for university either.

They don't talk, because he doesn't have the time to talk, and anyway, it's his friend who did this to Rei so he doesn't want any more of them. Still, the Japanese kid keeps popping up. Some natural gravitation, perhaps: two Japanese kids in a university in Austria, or two kids who, in Japan, would've been too young to be in a university. It doesn't matter. They both have their noses stuck in books and don't really talk. Except in tutorials where they have to talk.

But being thrown together so often means they will inevitably talk about more than the bare essentials.

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'Can I sit here?'

'Sure.'

'Thanks.'

There's an awkward pause after that. They're the only two in the library at that time: after hours access and they've stuck around late to study. Touma takes the empty seat across from the other boy and wonders if he too has something he simultaneously loves and avoids back home: something he's working towards and working for… which inevitably means spending less time with in the process.

But it's worth it, he tells himself, turning back to his books. He'll find a cure for Relena before she runs out of time and it'll be worth it. Even if that means Relena's feeling lonely now, in that big house with just the staff and their father who, sometimes, may as well just be another member of the staff.

They study in silence until the lights flicker; the unengaged ones are going off as the hospital switches over to night mode. Clever little system, really, to save power but make sure they haven't left the wandering night staff and students and patients in the dark. Still, that's his cue to get home, so he sets off a trial of lights as he walks out, leaving the other student still there. A dorm dweller, maybe?

Touma knows he's lucky to have a home, even if it is sometimes big and lonely. Not that it matters to him per say if it is big and lonely, because Relena is always there.

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Neo only looks up long enough to accept the other boy, and then gets back to his books. And the other doesn't make small talk either. He doesn't bother asking, for instance, why he's still hanging around when their classmates have long since gone home. Just like Neo doesn't bother asking why, of all the empty seats in an empty library, does the other pick the one half-occupied table?

It doesn't matter, anyway: empty or not empty. If they don't talk, they're not engaged with each other and he'll talk to patients but he doesn't need friends to talk with as well. He has Rei and Rei is all he needs, and he'll give Rei her legs back and they'll go back to how things used to be before he brought Hideto home.

The lights flicker, and it's pure night where only the artificial lights, when woken, shine. But that's okay. Their dorm space is small anyway and he can't take all these books. He'll stay longer, because Rei will understand. Rei understands. Rei knows he has to study hard, study quickly, so he can give her her legs back.

The other boy leaves, though. He packs his things away, says a quiet goodbye, and leaves.

And leaves one of his books behind, and Neo, only because he knows how hard it is to find something lost in a hospital, picks it up to return to him another time.

A photo flutters out, of a girl in a wheelchair looking up at him.

It's inevitable that he's clued into this, perhaps, because his heart flutters in his chest and he can't, at least, ignore this.

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Rei is lonely. She won't deny it, except to Neo because she knows Neo works for her sake and she knows that, even if she says it, Neo won't stop blaming himself and blaming Hideto for what happened. And Hideto won't stop blaming himself either. Poor Hideto whose all alone in Japan now with his guilt, after Neo cut all ties with him and he cut all ties with Rei. If only she has a way to free these boys… but, right now, perhaps the only way is to help Neo find the answer and that means supporting him along his way.

So she manages their little dorm room as best as she can manage. She cooks good nutritious food and makes sure Neo's taken snacks because he studies late because he knows she'll be a lot less mobile when he's there as well, due to space. So she does her best in her own studies even though she's not academically orientated at all, and she roams around the hospital sometimes because, at least here, she's not out of place in a wheelchair.

She does her best, and she knows her brother does her best. Still, doesn't change the being lonely part.

Maybe Neo will find another friend here. Or maybe she will.

And then suddenly Neo is home and tossing a notebook that doesn't look like his onto the table, and a photo of a girl in a wheelchair that doesn't look like her is slipping out… and she wonders if there isn't friend material for the both of them in that notebook.

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Relena is lonely in her big mansion with the staff and her often stiff and quiet father and her often absent big brother, but it's lovely when her brother comes home and spends some time with her. Often, though, his mind is elsewhere. And she can tell his mind is even further away today.

'What's wrong?' she asks.

'I've lost one of my notebooks.' And it bothers him, because he's the meticulous sort and so any of his notebooks are important. 'And it's a nightmare trying to find things again in the hospital.

'Maybe someone picked it up?' Relena suggests. 'There are lots of kind people in the world.'

'Maybe.' He doesn't sound so hopeful… but she hopes she's right. There are lots of kind people in the world, but she hasn't met many people outside of the staff and nurses and doctors and most of them are quite kind, but they need something more. Touma needs something more.

It'll be a stretch, she thinks, if whoever finds Touma's notebook can be a good friend to him, but the good kind of stretch. The sort of stretch she should pray for, she thinks. A good friend for Touma. And maybe a good friend for her as well, but she'll probably have to wait until she's better and that's why Touma's working so hard denying himself his own youth… And maybe it'll seem like a small sacrifice at the end, but right now it feels like they've had their lives on hold for so long…

If it's not the notebook, it'll be something, she thinks. Touma can't go to university and hospital placements most days of the week and not find at least one classmate he can call a friend. He's a kind person, after all. A kind, wonderful person. And if given half a chance, she's sure others will see that too.

University is like school, and school is a place to make friends after all. Or maybe that's just the way she, who's never been to school, sees these things.

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Two pairs of siblings, whose circumstances are similar yet different, have been carefully set up by a string of coincidences or fate to meet.

And one day, soon, they will meet.


	2. Chapter 2

**walking to walking**  
Chapter 2

Touma has a good memory, but not a perfect one. It's worst in the evenings, too, because everything is just too quiet and so his thoughts have more space to wander around. He's a free spirit, at the end of the day, he supposes. Like his mother; he can't just single-mindledly focus on success.

Well, not even his father can do that. He didn't inherit that sort of tenacity from his mother, Touma's grandmother. And that was too much tenacity, anyway. It made everyone around her sad and that wasn't what Touma wants at all. It's not what Relena wants either.

Still, he knows being away from Relena makes her sad as well. And maybe that, too, is why it's hardest to focus in the evenings, when he has the most time for independent study. Not for the first time, he wonders if it wouldn't be more practical to study late into the night instead, once Relena's gone to sleep. There's plenty of science to say that's not a good idea, but science isn't definitive proof and that would mean he could spent his evenings with Relena instead.

The issue of sleep is there, though, and he has to sacrifice at least some of that time with Relena. Until he finds a cure for her, it simply can't be helped.

And maybe it's a childish consolation prize, but he keeps a photo of them both close instead. Until one day he's left his notebook behind and, the next, it's not there and neither is the slim amount of relief it provided.

He searches furiously, but to no avail. It's simply not in the library where he thinks he's left it. It's not in any of the lecture halls either and it can't be at the hospital because he hasn't been there in three days. It's gone, then; that's the only other explanation and a pretty reasonable one. Less likely the person who's picked it up knows who it belongs to and will return it. A name doesn't mean much in a class of three hundred students and he stands out by face and reputation, not name.

It's gone, then. And he can't quite remember what's written in it but he'll have to deal with that. He can work it out, he thinks, if he looks through what he'd been studying that day, and what's in his other notebooks. He can work it out, and rewrite all those notes and it'll mean he'll remember better at the end of the day but it'll also take up more time. It's a pity, but it's far from the worst setback he's faced in recent years. It's fine. Relena will be disappointed but it's fine.

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The girl's pretty, Neo thinks, as he stares at the photo. The boy's got a sort of handsome quality to him too but he's worn. That much is obvious. It's the same sort of expression on his own face, Neo thinks, and maybe the two of them are more similar than he thought: Saiba Neo and Touma H. Norstein.

The girl's not like Rei though, he thinks. She's pretty in a delicate, fragile sort of way. Like a summer flower meant for bouquets but not much else, or a doll meant for a glass case. Rei is strong and stubborn and, before her accident, playing soccer with the boys and besting them. This girl must have been sick for a long time, he thinks. She looks worn, and innocent like she's lived in a glass case all her life like that delicate, impractical and beautiful doll.

She must be a delicate, impractical and beautiful doll, he thinks. And he's not sure which is worse: to never have left the dollhouse, or to have lived on the outside only to be forced in and locked inside.

It's none of his business, though. He has Rei and he hasn't got time for another family's tragic story. He can return the book, though. He runs into Touma H. Norstein often enough. It won't even taken him out of his way. And he should return the book, because no doubt that girl is important to him… and the photo is as well.

And if he's working with the same sort of fervour and desperation to save this girl, then he needs the notebook and its contents too.

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'You left this in the library yesterday,' says Saiba Neo, after hailing him near the gates. He's on his way to the train station – a place he won't run into Touma H. Norstein because the rich Austrian aristocrats always send a car instead. He doesn't begrudge that, like some of their classmates. He doesn't begrudge the age either, because they're the same. Nor does he begrudge the reason… Really, there's nothing about Touma H. Norstein that Saiba Neo, at this point, begrudges. And they haven't yet reached the point where their company has become unbearable to one another.

Touma stares at the book, and then at him, before taking it with a murmured thanks. 'You've saved me a lot of trouble,' he repeats, relaxing and sounding more grateful than tense this time around. 'Let me thank you, somehow.'

Neo shrugs. 'Unless you can cure my sister, there's nothing I need.' It's slipped out before he can think it through, or maybe it was that photo that loosened his tongue.

Touma, surprised, blinks. 'I'm sorry.' And he does sound sorry. 'I suppose we're both here for the same reason. To cure our sisters.'

So that girl is Touma's sister, after all. Neo doesn't really care… and yet he pays attention anyway. He's sure Rei will ask, too.

'I'll give you a lift,' Touma decides. 'It's much faster than the train.'

Neo has no reason not to accept it, not even pride… because he can accept someone wanting to repay a debt as a matter of pride.

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Rei stares at Neo as he walks into their cramped little room. There's something different about him. He's not slightly out of breath like he tends to be on university days, making the uphill trek from the train station. He's a little rumpled too, like he's been sitting down the whole time and that's a stroke of luck if he managed to find a seat on the train from the university. And he hasn't got a book in his hand: another surprise. A book not in his hand is time wasted, after all.

'A classmate gave me a lift,' Neo explained, 'as a thank you for returning his notebook.'

'Aah,' says Rei. 'What sort of classmate is he?' After all, Neo rarely talks about his classmates.

'Like me,' Neo says, after a brief moment of thought, and then proceeds to empty his bag and set up his study space.

'Give me more information than that.' Rei pouts. She knows if she loses this, there'll be silence until dinner: long pockets of science while Neo chases a Rei in the future and ignores the present one. Sometimes she wants to shake him out of that zone – but she knows he only does this because of her, and for her, and how can she in the end, when he's vowed to give her the means to walk again?

'Tall, blond, rich,' Neo lists. 'Has a little sister he's trying to cure.'

'The girl in the photo?' Rei asks. 'She was cute.'

'Yes, cute,' Neo replies. 'Cute and fragile, like the world will blow her over if she goes out into it.'

'How sad,' Rei says. Neo doesn't reply, and Rei repeats it to herself: 'How sad.' She's not sure how much of that is conjecture and how much is fact, but to be confined because of illness, because of physical weakness…

Well, she can't get out very often either, but that doesn't mean she doesn't. There's not much flat around and for no reason except poor design choices, but sometimes Neo pushes her to the hospital and then she can roam around those corridors as much as she likes. Her body's not frail, after all. It's just her legs, and the limitations of the wheelchair she's confined to. It's not the same as choking on the too crisp air of the outside world.

Rather, she often opens their one and only window to swallow that crisp air in greedy gulps. It's almost stale, compared to what she'd enjoyed before, but this is all she can get for now, in this place… Until Neo finds the means for her to walk again, finds what he's looking for…

'Your classmate probably wants to show his little sister the world as well,' she thinks aloud.

Neo is absorbed in his books and doesn't answer. Maybe he doesn't even hear her… Or maybe he thinks there's simply nothing to say to a statement like that. After all, she's not asking anything, or saying anything ground-breaking. It's just a comment, plain and simple: something that didn't even need to be said.

She says it anyway. Maybe, she thinks, she'll feel a little less sad, a little more fortunate, during those times where she feels like the most unfortunate girl in the world.

It's most often when she's alone though, in those same times no-one is around to hear her words. 'I kind of want to visit her,' she thinks aloud, and she's not sure if it's altruistic or selfish: that want. After all, people tend to feel empowered when they see those weaker or more unfortunate than themselves. People's nurturing instincts are also awakened in such times.

Neo does look up at that, does consider her throwaway request with some seriousness. 'I'll bring it up,' he says finally. 'We see each other often enough to wind up talking again.'

He won't go out of his way, she takes that to mean, but another meeting between them will be inevitable. That's fine, she thinks. He's not thinking about Hideto when he says that, otherwise he would have refused the notion entirely. Whenever he thinks of Hideto, he stays at his desk and she stays in this little cramped dorm room and nobody even thinks to look outside, because outside is where there are cars that have taken her legs and their way of life away… and also their only friend.

She won't say it, then, because she doesn't want to tempt fate. She's looking forward to it though, assuming Neo doesn't change his mind between now and then: looking forward to having a friend once more.

Though Hideto was Neo's friend, first and foremost. And maybe that's what makes everything worse. She wants a friend of her own. Or maybe she wants the illusion of a friend of her own, because the real thing might leave their lives in shatters once more.

Except it's not Hideto's fault. Not Neo's fault either. Not her's. Just that driver who ignored a red light and ran a crossing when he wasn't supposed to. But blaming him won't change anything. Carrying blame won't change anything. Staying away won't change anything. Chasing shadows… That might change something. That might. Neo's trying to prove it will.

Neo's hand is suddenly on hers, cold and wet. She blinks. That's her fault; her tears leaving trails down his skin. She rubs her eyes with a watery smile. He frowns at her. 'I'll fix this,' he vows for perhaps the hundredth time.

Well, maybe that's all that keeps her going, sometimes. And other times… she lifts his hand to her cheek. It's still cold from being exposed, but to her it's the warmest thing in the world and her lifeline, her only company in the dollhouse she exists in.

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They don't talk much, in the car. It's a bit of a waste, Touma thinks, so they practice questions instead. That's effective, and also enlightening, but in the end they drop Saiba Neo off and return home without knowing a whole lot more about him.

Well, the purpose of giving him a ride isn't to psychoanalyse him, so Touma doesn't consider that more than a simple lost opportunity. Relena is curious, though. She asks questions he can't answer, moreso than about his other classmates because he doesn't offer any of them rides home. 'It was a thank you,' he says, somewhat exasperated.

Relena is relentless though, especially when she finds out the other has a little sister too. 'You should introduce us,' she says. 'It'll be a great study date.'

Well, Touma won't deny they can't study together, considering the ride, but the ride also showed they're both rather independent learners. 'Maybe,' he hedges. 'It might be more effective closer to exams.'

'And we've got such a big house as well.' Relena makes a motion with her arms, like she's trying to swing around. But it doesn't work with the wheelchair, and no doubt if she'd been standing she would have toppled over anyway.

He's sad when he thinks that, but it is the reality. She's simply not healthy enough to enjoy things others take for granted, and that's why he's here in Austria in this big and empty house and working so hard, so he can give that sort of life to her.

But Relena says the house is big, as well. He hasn't done anything about that, has he, staying late in the library to study. He doesn't need to, he knows. The house is big enough. More than big enough. It's because he wants to spend time with Relena when he's home that he doesn't.

'I've got new books.' She says it almost shyly, and Touma hears the words behind them. She'll read her books and Touma will read his books and they can enjoy each other's company and do the things they need to do as well.

And that's true, he accepts. Life isn't all about running around and being energetic. There are quiet times as well. And he won't leave his notebooks in the library often if he's not there often. And yet he knows he won't concentrate on his studies, won't concentrate on a goal that sometimes seems so far away…

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'My sister would like to meet yours,' Neo says, rather bluntly, after their next hospital tutorial.

'My sister's been saying the same,' Touma replies, before his mind catches up. 'That is to say… aah…'

'You disapprove?' he asks. It's not accusing, really. Not curious either. Just asking: plain and simple.

'Not at all.' Touma shakes his head. 'It's just that she proposed a study date.'

'A date,' he repeats, and this time there is a hint of emotion there.

'A study date is simply two people studying together. Any more and it's a group.' English is odd that way, having too many connotations for the word "date" that is sensible at the best of times.

'It's a misleading word,' Neo shrugs in agreement. 'Though that's hardly the topic of this conversation.'

'No,' Touma agrees. 'In any case, you and your sister are both welcome to our house. We have plenty of space. Too much, really.'

There's something odd in Neo's eyes at that comment, but he considers. 'We don't travel well,' he says, finally. Even though he takes the train to and from the university.

'We have a chauffeur,' Touma reminds, regardless. 'I'll tell him to bring the van that he uses for Relena's appointments.'

So the wheelchair will fit without a problem.

They've made arrangements before coming to an agreement, really. But that's okay. Things might have unravelled if they'd tried to halt the flow. But they didn't. They don't.

Instead, the flow carries them together.


End file.
